Contemporary retail stores compete fiercely to establish and maintain the store loyalty of their present customers and to attract new customers to their stores. One mode of attraction is by offering personalized service which is adapted to meet the particular expectations and needs of each member of a highly diversified clientele. Matching service requirements to a particularized customer base, particularly in large department stores or stores with multiple facilities in many locations, requires the taking and maintaining of large amounts of data and processing of such data so as to compile a shopping profile of each customer.
Most modern retail stores implement some form of computerization or electronic technology in their operations. This typically consists of using point-of-sale (POS) systems for automating checkout procedures, assisting sales personnel, and the like. POS systems generally include one or more automated check-out terminals which are capable of sensing and interpreting a Universal Product Code (UPC) which is printed, or tagged, on each item of merchandise to be purchased. Conventionally, a POS terminal, a kiosk terminal or a salesperson's hand-held terminal is coupled to a computer system which recognizes and processes the UPC information. A database, accessible by the computer system, includes a list of merchandise items stocked by the store, a UPC for each of these items, and various types of merchandise identification information, including pricing, inventory, style, color, etc., associated with each UPC. When a customer is ready to make a purchase, a store clerk uses an automated POS terminal to read the UPC markings on each of the customer's selections. The computer interprets the UPC, accesses the database to determine the price for each item and maintains a running total of the purchase price.
Many stores also use computerized systems to convey pricing and other information about its merchandise to its customers and to acquire information about the kinds of merchandise purchased by a customer, frequencies of purchase the effect of advertising and in-store promotional activities, and other indicia of a customer's shopping habits. Retail stores use this information to control the costs of providing personalized services and products to its customers and to provide increased convenience and flexibility to the shopping experience.
An additional use of customer transaction information is to maintain a shopping history record of purchases by particular customers so as to award loyalty or incentive points to a customer based on their transactions. For example, incentive points might qualify a customer for participation in a discount program or some similar promotion, in a manner similar to airlines awarding frequent-flyer mileage points.
However acquired, and however used, customer data is conventionally captured during purchase transactions at one or more of a retail store's POS terminals. The data is transferred to a store's computer system where it is processed and appended to a particular customer's shopping transaction history. Incentive points are awarded, coupon codes are analyzed for applicability promotional items are evaluated, and the like, and an updated transaction record is provided to the POS terminal for immediate applicability to a customer's purchases.
However, such a system is most efficient in relatively small stores with a generally homogeneous merchandise inventory. Such stores may be efficiently serviced by a single central computer system which is able to maintain a reasonably sized database and process information with regard to only certain kinds of merchandise. One of the problems experienced by modern retail stores is that they might sell a wide variety of merchandise, in many departments, in a single facility. For example, department stores might sell groceries, clothing, tools, furniture, sporting goods, drugs and pharmaceuticals, etc., each organized into separate departments. Department stores tend to distribute their computer systems in a network configuration so as to have each of the separate departments serviced by a department server which maintains the merchandise database for each of the departments. Database updates, and customer transactions, are transferred between department servers and a store central computer on a periodic basis; database updates being downloaded from a store central computer and customer transactions being uploaded for processing. In order to make efficient use the processing power of the store central computer and the distributed databases, information transfer takes place as a batch process, on a periodic basis, with typically one to two hours elapsing between batch transfers.
For a chain of retail stores, each of the store central computers are likewise linked to a central processing facility which performs the same function for the stores as the store's central computer performs for the department servers. For example, the various databases of each store might be merely mirror images of the main database, such that a store's database may only be changed by modifying the central database.
In this particular implementation, information is again exchanged between each of the store's computer systems and the central processing facility in a batch process. Conventionally, batch processes are carried out during low-demand periods such as after the closing hours of some or all of the stores comprising the chain. Such batch process transfers typically occur only once a day.
The result of batch processing consumer transactions, either within a department store, or between stores in a chain, is that a particular customer's most recent transactions may not be accessible to a retail store's POS, or other in-store terminals because of the time lag between a customer transaction and the next scheduled batch process which updates each customer's file and makes that transaction history available to all of the other systems in the network.
These discontinuities in a customer's transaction history can result in the customer not receiving credit, for a period of time, for recently made transactions. If a customer were making multiple transactions in a department store or transactions at different stores in a chain, transactions made earlier in the day might not count for incentive award points which might result in the customer missing out on a particular promotional item offered at another store or in another department. For example, if the customer needed only an additional $100.00 transaction to qualify for a value coupon, and the customer made a $70.00 transaction in another department earlier, the customer would only need an additional $30.00 transaction to obtain the value coupon. Under the present, conventional method, a particular department might not have the information available as to the customer's prior purchase and thus, would be unable to award the coupon on a timely basis. There is no present method available for obtaining and tracking such information on a real time basis so as to maintain a particular customer's transaction history with complete accuracy at the moment of purchase.
Certain systems are available in the prior art for capturing and maintaining certain kinds of information relating to store merchandise and/or customer transactions. Each of these methods, however, are very specific as to the type of information captured and the uses to which the information is put.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,566,327 discloses a computerized information system for theme parks which utilizes a smart card, provided to a visitor as a guest pass, to record information relating to the theme park's products and services. The guest pass controls and monitors admission to the park and functions as a smart debit card with which a guest is able to prepay for various goods and services offered at various point-of-sale locations throughout the park. The smart guest card is able to identify the rightful cardholder and also guarantee the eligibility of the particular guest to receive the appropriate services and/or products that have been paid for and written into a memory store of the guest card. The guest card is implemented as a pocket-sized computer that has a shape similar to plastic bankcards but include silicon chips and software embedded into the card package. However, the system is difficult to implement as a real-time transaction history acquisition and maintenance system, because the smart guest pass is adapted to function as a debit system. The park's products and services are initially evaluated by a guest and certain items are contracted for and prepaid. These items are entered into the guest pass and, as received, decremented from the guest pass by means of a conventional cash-less payment methodology.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,665,951 discloses an electronic system which assists a customer in making a purchase transaction by providing compatibility information relating to recent, similar transactions made by the customer. The system includes an IC or smart card which is able to store indicia identifying selected characteristics of items which are currently owned by the customer, such as clothing color, styling parameters and metric information. A particular disadvantage to the system disclosed in the '951 patent is that it is only useful for determining compatibility between selected items and currently-owned items. In particular, the system of the '951 patent requires that each contemplated item and each currently-owned item be identified by suitable compatibility information so that the system can make an accurate comparison and compatibility determination.
Accordingly, there exists a need for an electronic, computerized system that is able to collect and store customer transaction history information in real-time and make that information available to a department store or chain store POS, or other in-store terminal, such that a customer's transaction history data is always up-to-date. Such a system should be easily portable by a customer and easily accessible to a POS, or other in-store terminal so that transaction history information may be read therefrom and/or written thereto at the instant a transaction is consummated.